After studying of more than 2,000 people, it is claimed thoughts DO carry on after the heart stops.

The extraordinary research has also uncovered the most convincing evidence of an out-of-body experience for a patient declared dead.

Before that it had been believed the brain stopped all activity 30 seconds after the heart had stopped pumping blood about the body,

And with that, awareness ceases too.

“Contrary to perception, death is not a specific moment but a potentially reversible proces”

Lead researcher Dr Sam Parnia

But the study from the University of Southampton shows people still experience awareness for up to three minutes after they had been pronounced dead.

Lead researcher Dr Sam Parnia said: "Contrary to perception, death is not a specific moment but a potentially reversible process that occurs after any severe illness or accident causes the heart, lungs and brain to cease functioning.

"If attempts are made to reverse this process, it is referred to as 'cardiac arrest'; however, if these attempts do not succeed it is called 'death'."

Of the 2,060 patients from Austria, the US and the UK interviewed for the study who had survived cardiac arrest, almost 40 per cent said that they recall some form of awareness after being pronounced clinically dead.

Ghosts Caught on Camera

Friday, 3rd October 2014

A collection of images of ghostly goings on from around the UK.

1 / 11

Mary Evans Library

Ghost at Raynham Hall, Norfolk

Of those who said they had experienced some awareness, just two per cent said their experience was consistent with the feeling of an outer body experience – where one feels completely aware and can hear and see what’s going on around them after death.

Almost half of the respondents said the experience was not of awareness, but rather of fear.

But the most significant finding of the study is that of a 57-year old man who is perhaps the first confirmed outer body experience in a patient.

The man was able to recall with eerie accuracy what was going on around him after he had "died" temporarily.